Summary:
After reading just two chapters of this book you will begin to see examples of flawed designs at every turn. Doors, computers, televisions, radios, and many other examples show a proper natural mapping to their actions.
This is one of the key concepts I took from reading this book. Not only is it simple and should be easily followed, but often it is ignored. A "natural mapping" means things that move up, down, left, and right in the real world should have controls that move up, down, left, and right rather than flip, rotate, twist, and punch 42 on a keypad.
A description of some basic human psychology is also included in this book. When people look at a device, they attempt to explain to themselves how the device works based on the evidence they can see. Most of the time these are the controls of the interface for a particular device. This can sometimes lead to poor mental models of the operation of the device and result in errors in operation.
Other areas that were particularly interesting in this book were a detailed description of memory, the psychology of errors, and eventually how to bring everything together to create an interface designed to assist the users, not inhibit.
Example:
This pen has a button on top of the pen that it nicely mapped to its function. Pushing the button down moves the ball point out of the case to allow you to write. This second button however is not as easy to understand. With most pens you push the top button again to bring the point back into the case, but with this pen you push a second button on the side of the pen. Not only is it strange to have an additional button to do this function, but the indention on the pen case seems to imply that you slide the button up to bring the point upwards. This would be a nice physical connection to the action and the control, but instead the button must be labeled "push" to avoid confusion. This pen was immediately a strange sight and even more mystifying is why it was created this way in the first place.Provocative Question:
-Background: Norman describes two main locations for knowledge, in the head and in the world, as well as the tradeoffs for both.
-Question: While the virtues of the knowledge of thousands of encyclopedias at your fingertips are obvious, with the increasing ubiquity of "knowledge in the world" through the internet, How do you think this affects the general knowledge of society and our ability to function?
Final Thoughts:
This book was a short, but great, read and I recommend it for anyone who wants to know a little about memory, how humans accomplish tasks, and how humans, despite the many examples in everyday life, continue to confound others with the designs of faucets, doors and telephones.
Wow, that's interesting. I've never seen a pushbutton pen with this design. If this particular pen was the norm, do you think the "one click for down, another click for up" would be confusing?
ReplyDeleteI have seen and own a couple pens (all of them are at home, though) like that one. The main problem I have always found with those pens is due to the slide/push button on the side. I would be writing with one of these pens, and then I would move my hand the wrong way and bump the side button, making the pen tip retract. This was always highly annoying, and the noise it made was a little too loud, especially if you were using it during an exam.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question, Steven, I almost think that having more knowledge on the internet at our fingertips makes people less likely to learn and internalize the information. People know that they can go on the internet, so they don't bother to learn the information. This would mean that when they need to use said information during their daily lives, they would be helpless without an internet connection, or some way of looking up the information on the spot. I think this would really interfere with one's ability to function during one's daily routine.